Nerve of the Day. AOL hilited today a story about President Ford's lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda that included this passage:

"It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe," said Cheney ["the current vice president who was Ford's chief of chief"], speaking in the Rotunda where Ford's body rested. "Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon."

This came one day after Iraq executed Saddam Hussein, an act the Bush-Cheney Government incited and praised. Ironic, huh?+Gerald Ford led us out of the Watergate era, with these words:

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.

As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.

For that, the Nation, at the least, must forever be grateful.+Iraq has entered a new era more harshly. Will the death of Saddam allow Iraq to move on cleanly and forgivingly as the pardon of Nixon allowed us to move on? Would that it could.+At end, it is almost certain that any successful government of Iraq will have to extend mass pardons to present-day insurgents in order to return Iraq to peace. The quest for "justice" thru reprisal all too rarely succeeds, because one man's justice is another man's outrage. The will to triumph, to pound one's chest like the dominant gorilla after he has chased away or killed his rival, is built into our primeval nature. But Jesus wasn't just awoofin' when he said "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9).+Peace is more than the absence of violent conflict. It is letting go of grievances, of apologizing of open heart, and making amends, not excuses. It's very hard to do, which is why Jesus said that peacemakers "shall be called the children of God", which I take to mean that peacemakers have something of the divine in them, the power and indeed the authority to forgive. There's a certain majesty in forgiving, which is why some people resent being forgiven. 'Who are you to forgive me!?! If anything, I should forgive you!' Fine, forgive me, forgive him, forgive her, forgive everyone and let us have peace.+Gerald Ford was a very decent man. Not perfect, but decent. He meant well and achieved wonders in an abbreviated, solitary term as President of the United States.+Saddam Hussein was a monstrously bad man, but he maintained very solid order in a fractious and violent country, within a fractured and violent region, for almost 24 years. George W. Bush, who is neither a decent man nor by intent a monstrously bad man, overthrew Saddam and loosed the demons we see ravaging Iraq today. Bush threw open Pandora's box, which Saddam had kept titely sealed, and there is no way to get its contents back under seal, but forgiveness.+Iraqis must make peace, or separate into mutually independent groups, or triumph brutally, one group over another. But triumphalism brings only a cessation of active hostilities, not the peace that a democratic society must have, the peace of equals forgiving each other.+The United States has always had a sense of itself as a new beginning, a very special place where humankind can create heaven on Earth by overthrowing the old orders of political, economic, and social injustice as would allow people to treat each other fairly, which is the only way so many different groups as are here could live in peace. We have nothing on Iraq in that department. Baghdad means "Gift of God", and the nature of that gift was clarified with a change of name when the Abbasids moved the capital of the Caliphate there in 762 A.D.: "Medinat al-Salaam", "City of Peace". Would that it were, today.+Federalism is the only hope for Iraq. Three triumphalist groups cannot share the same turf. Each must have its own. "Good fences make good neighbors." In political terms, good state boundaries make good neighbors, for each group can feel secure in its own homeland, and then reach across state lines as equals, not in a numerical sense, because Shiites are much more numerous than the Sunnis of the remainder of Iraq (the great preponderance of Kurds are Sunni), but in the sense of having equal human value, having as much to offer, and being as worthy of respectful attention to their suggestions as anyone else. This is why we have two houses in our national legislature, one in which each state is indeed equal to each other in a numerical sense and the other in which the weight of numbers counts but does not trump. That is exactly the kind of government Iraq needs if it is to emerge from its own "long national nightmare".+In this difficult time, Iraqis need to heed the words of Jesus in the Beatitudes. Perhaps it will be easy for them to do so if they remember that Jesus was a Hebrew, and the Hebrews originated in Iraq. Moreover, Islam accords special prominence to Jesus as a prophet who was taken alive into Heaven and will descend to Earth with the Mahdi to destroy the anti-Christ and bring peace to the world. It should thus be easy for Moslems to heed the Beatitudes that Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. Secular Iraqis as much as secular Americans can remove the religious aspect and aspire to the moral teachings, the decent treatment of one another that a moral leader calls us to:

5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.5:4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.5:5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.5:7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.5:10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

As Mahatma Gandhi cautioned, 'An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.' At end, then, if there is to be peace in Iraq, not just the momentary absence of open warfare, there must be pardon.+Americans must not see amnesty for insurrectionaries as surrender, if it brings peace. The British would have loved to do to George Washington what the Iraqi government did to Saddam. That would no more have brought peace across the Atlantic than the execution of Saddam has brought peace across group boundaries in Iraq. American triumphalism cannot bring peace to Iraq. Even if we could pour a million men (yes, men) into Iraq and disarm every single Iraqi, that would not bring peace to Iraq. Peace requires pardon. Expect it. Accept it. Embrace it.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", has reached a new milestone: 3,000  for Israel.)

Not This Time, Edwards. Former Democratic Senator from North Carolina John Edwards, who ran for Vice President on Kerry's ticket, has announced his intention to seek the Presidency in 2008. Not so fast, buddy.+Edwards seems a very decent man, whose heart is in the right place. But he's too young, and, more importantly, he's from the South. For the past 17 years we have had nothing but a string of Presidents from the South, and it's got to stop. Indeed, beyond that unbroken string, four of the last five presidents, going back to 1977, have been from the South  that is, from states that were part of the hideous conspiracy against decency called the "Confederacy". I'm tired of it. I don't care how well qualified or how decent John Edwards may be, we need a break. The North must rise again.+Edwards is young enuf to wait another four or eight years. It's time for the Democrats AND Republicans to nominate Northerners in 2008. Not Westerners. Certainly not Southerners. What matters most in politics is who holds office, and what that person's perspective is. We've had enuf of the Southern and Western perspective with Bush One, Bush Two, Clinton, Reagan, and Carter. It's time for someone with a Northern sensibility to steer the ship of state. Share the wealth.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,990  for Israel.)

James Brown, Gerald Ford: Rest in Peace, One week ago today, I was in my old stomping grounds, the Middletown-Red Bank area of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and was struck by the big names scheduled to appear at what had, when I lived there, been the Walter Reade Theater and then became first the Monmouth Arts Center and then the Count Basie Theatre. In addition to the performers noted on the marquee (pix below), Hootie & the Blowfish, David Cassidy, Jackie Mason, Frankie Valli, and Lily Tomlin are scheduled to appear. The biggest name, to me, however, was James Brown. I was impressed that little Red Bank was getting a performance by James Brown.Sadly, he won't be making his Red Bank appearance, tho he will be appearing (not, alas, "live") at the Apollo Theater in New York tomorrow, where he will lie in state for his fans to pay their respects.+This is the other side of the marquee that day.As I was taking pix of the theater, a young black woman and what appeared to be her grandmother were walking by. The young woman saw Ruben Studdard's name on the marquee and was excited. (Studdard won the American Idol TV contest in 2003, over Clay Aiken.) She wondered if she could get tickets. I was so startled by that, that I asked her, "You'd rather see Ruben Studdard than James Brown?" She nodded, and her grandmother smiled knowingly at me and remarked, "She's young."+I never saw James Brown perform in person, and not all his music suited my tastes, but he was terrific in many memorable songs. My favorite was "I Feel Good", which achieved such wide diffusion that one practically cannot hear that phrase without singing, at least in your mind, DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA! His excitable nature got him into trouble with the law, and he was not exactly a role model for youth. But he was a major presence in American popular culture, and will be missed.+Gerald Ford, a fine, gentle man who served with distinction as the first completely unelected President of the United States, passed away yesterday as the oldest past President, at 93. He masterfully helped the Nation heal after the Watergate scandal brought down his boss, Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter, who defeated Ford's attempt to win election on his own, paid tribute during his inauguration speech to Ford's perfect touch in that difficult time. He pardoned Nixon because the Nation needed it. It was exactly the right thing to do, and saved us months or years of recriminations and investigations that would have served no worthy good. His wife, Betty Ford, had a dignified and impressive impact upon the Nation, both for being open about her breast cancer during Gerald Ford's Presidency and for openly coping with alcoholism and addiction to painkillers, then opening the Betty Ford Center, which has done yeoman work in helping people break from drug dependence. The Nation has truly been blessed by the Fords. And they're Republicans!+Did the Nixon pardon cost Ford the election? Impossible to say. But Ford always maintained what every decent person would maintain: it is important to do the right thing, no matter what.+Ford (who, like Clinton, was born with a different name but took his stepfather's name) was a gentle, amiable, athletic but publicly clumsy fellow the Nation actively liked. His Presidency is distinguished not so much for its few striking achievements  tho he did get back the Mayaguez  but for the unprecedented way in which he had risen to the Presidency. Spiro Agnew, elected Vice President with Nixon, had resigned, and the provisions of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. President Nixon nominated Ford to become Vice President in Agnew's place, and both houses of Congress confirmed him by December 1973. That was the first time that had ever happened. When Nixon resigned in August 1974, Ford became a President the electorate had never voted for, but he was fully legitimate.+There's a lesson here as to how we could easily and quickly change both President and Vice President without impeachment, if the Nation wants Bush and Cheney out. Cheney resigns. Bush nominates someone the Democrats could accept as Vice President, even if another Republican. Then Bush resigns, the new Vice President immediately rises to President, and nominates another new Vice President. It could all be done in a week.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,983  for Israel.)

Multiracial 'Niggers' in New Jersey. Governor Corzine has signed a bill to grant same-sex couples "civil union", not "marriage", despite my having urged him to regard "civil union" for gay couples but "marriage" for straight couples as the exact equivalent of "civil union" for blacks but "marriage" for whites.+Jon Corzine is an evil, stupid man. He has also signed legislation to make New Jersey a major center of childslaughter as "medical research" into the use of embryonic stem cells to treat various maladies of people already born. There is absolutely no guarantee that killing babies to harvest stem cells will produce any medical advance of any value whatsoever. There is, however, an absolute guarantee that 'harvesting' embryonic stem cells WILL KILL children.+Jon Corzine is so oblivious of morality that he is perfectly willing to kill babies to try to help strangers to those babies, about whom those babies would have absolutely no reason whatsoever to care so much as to feel an instant's sorrow on their death from causes having nothing to do with anything those babies did.+Jon Corzine should be killed, and chopped up for parts for transplant into other people, as should every single advocate of embryonic stem-cell research. Kill them all, chop them all up for parts. They think it's morally fine to kill babies to give their organs to strangers? How can they possibly object to being killed themselves so that strangers might live?+I don't "get it". How can you live and not identify with other living beings? How can you consider yourself human but advocate that babies be killed with impunity and chopped up for parts? How can you do that?+You can't. Not one decent person has ever in the history of the world advocated killing babies to chop them up for parts for adults. Not one decent person ever. Nor could so much as one decent person advocate killing the innocent to keep anyone alive, given that every single person now alive who is older than about 4 has committed some wrongful act against someone. Not one unborn child has ever committed any wrong against anyone. By contrast, the prisons of this Nation are filled to overflowing with utterly, irredeemably evil, subhuman scum who have killed decent people from malice. So whom do we choose to kill and chop up for parts? The evil, subhuman scum who murdered decent people? Of course not! We choose to kill utterly innocent babies who could not so much as speak ill of a person, much less kill him or her. Yet we pretend to be decent people concerned about right and wrong.+No. We are not decent people, we are not a decent Nation, if we kill babies to chop them up for parts but leave murderers, even mass murderers, alive. We have no right to see ourselves as anything but fundamentally and monstrously evil if we permit utterly innocent babies to be chopped up for parts but spend our hard-earned dollars to keep murderers alive at taxpayer expense. When will people achieve sanity and decency? Never? I hate the "human" race, and am ashamed to belong to it.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,966  for Israel.)

Drivel from NORML, as Usual.(Very long entry (c. 3,600 words), but important. Read at your leisure.) AOL had the irresponsible stupidity to hilite a December 18th report that included lunatic, invented statistics from the marijuana lobby.

U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country's largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday.

The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also concluded that five U.S. states produce more than $1 billion worth of marijuana apiece: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington.

That "statistic" is a complete fabrication, an invention, snatched from the clear blue sky by an advocate not of "medical marijuana" but of full and unconditional legalization of that supposedly 'harmless' drug. There are in reality NO reliable statistics on marijuana production because marijuana is illegal, and producers of illegal substances do not publish their production logs. Every statistic on illegal drug production and use is, at very best, a wild-eyed guesstimate.

Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he could not confirm the report's conclusions on the size of the country's marijuana crop. But he said the government estimated overall U.S. illegal drug use at $200 billion annually.

In short, this country has a very big drug problem. Exactly how big, no one knows. Alas, instead of declining, the Nation's drug problem seems to be getting worse, as media trivialize drug use and celebrity after celebrity goes into rehab and comes out proclaiming how easy it is to get over drug addiction if only you want to.

Gettman said the 10-fold increase in U.S. marijuana production, from 1,000 metric tons in 1981 to 10,000 metric tons in 2006, showed the country was failing to control marijuana by making its cultivation and use illegal.

That's because we play pattycake with drug pushers. If we had the laws that Singapore and Indonesia have, we wouldn't have a drug problem.+The marijuana lobby has been so successful that a large portion of the U.S. population has bought the lie that marijuana is absolutely harmless, so should be fully legalized. The AOL story had an accompanying poll, with these results:

Should the government just legalize and tax the drug? Yes 88%No 12% Total Votes: 28,450

Idiots. These results do not accord with random-sampled polls, which show much lower levels of public support for legalization of marijuana. Presumably, the druggies among us made a point to vote on each and every one of their seven AOL screennames, and alerted their druggie friends to do the same. But even legitimate polls have shown an inclination by an appallingly large proportion of the population to legalize marijuana, first "medically"  as tho marijuana has any legitimate medical use  and then for all purposes. Such people just don't know what they're talking about.+Let me tell you something about drugs that the very young, and very stupid and self-indulgent, don't want to believe. Drugs were outlawed not because legislators had nothing to do the day that anti-drug legislation came up for a vote, but because drugs are hugely destructive.+I am part of a minority that has suffered catastrophically (and there is in that word not the tiniest bit of exaggeration) from drug use. Hundreds of thousands of gay men in this country have died from drugs or had very large portions of their lives taken from them by drug addiction. The gay world in the late 1970s was soaked in drugs, and in the early 1980s immediately thereafter gay men by the thousands started to die from AIDS, which, despite the lies you hear from the Federal Government, is a drug injury produced by years of heavy use of multiple hard drugs.+I personally was hassled endlessly by gay men who wanted me to join them in using drugs, and tried to make me feel "uncool" and "out of it" if I resisted. I refused all but two or three tries of marijuana, which I am glad did nothing for me. I couldn't understand why anyone would risk trouble with the law for something that had far less impact than a single beer, in a city (New York) where we could buy beer any time of day or nite. Because I did not become a druggie and did not fall into the subculture of heavy drug use within the gay community, I am alive today, and none of my friends  not one  died from AIDS. We even had sex with some of the guys from the drug subculture who went on to die from AIDS. But we never got AIDS ourselves. Because AIDS has nothing to do with sex but everything to do with the chemicals in hard drugs, especially the uncountable combinations and permutations of multiple drugs used in different doses by different people on different nites.+There is no other explanation for why I and my friends, all of whom had lots and lots of sex, with hundreds and hundreds of gay men, including later AIDS sufferers, in New York City, which is at the very top of AIDS statistics, are alive while hundreds of thousands of gay men who soaked themselves in drugs are dead from AIDS. No other explanation, Government nonsense about HIV to the contrary notwithstanding.+The only thing you might be able to trust the Government on, as regards AIDS, is statistics: The cumulative number of AIDS cases in the United States through 2005 is 988,376. The CDC's statistics intrude notions of causation into categories, so in trying to establish how many gay men developed AIDS, you have to discount the assertions of 'causation' to get to the numbers of gay men affected. Gay men are broken out into two categories, "Male-to-male sexual contact" (454,106) and "Male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use" (66,081), for a total of 520,187. On a base of 988,376 total cases thru year-end 2005, that means that gay/"bisexual" men comprise 53% of all AIDS cases in this country  as the CDC defines AIDS, which is very much open to dispute. Yet gay men are said to be no more than 10% of the total male population, and thus less than 5% of the total national population. Indeed, some Rightwingers want to pretend that gay men are at most 1% of the male population and thus less than ½ of 1% of the total population. How can so small a percentage of the population account for 53% of all the Nation's AIDS cases?+What about gender? One source says:

As of December 2003, nearly 50 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide were women. In the United States, about 25 percent of people with HIV/AIDS are women.

But if we stick to AIDS and put aside HIV, we see the statistic is actually 182,822 women out of 988,376 total cases, or 19%. 19%. Is the assertion that 25% of cases are among women an innocent error, or an attempt to worry American women by exaggerating their risk?  and trying to bring U.S. numbers more in line with worldwide numbers? Realize that a 6% discrepancy on a base of 19% is a 32% exaggeration. And realize as well that "world" figures include U.S. figures, so figures outside the U.S. are even a bit higher than 50% of all AIDS cases being found in women!+Figures for AIDS in Africa in particular are hard to get to, because HIV is constantly thrown up as a substitute for AIDS, as in this quotation from an Africa-oriented webpage, which claims to cite a United Nations report:

Three-quarters of all Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 who are HIV-positive are women. That astonishing figure, just released by UNAIDS, highlights the growing concern of international agencies, African governments and AIDS activists over the 'gendered' impact of AIDS in Africa. It also has spurred the beginnings of a campaign to help young African women counter the disease.

In much of the world, HIV/AIDS has for a long time been seen as a problem that affects men, specifically gay men, and as a result of this preconception, the harm that it does to women around the world has been largely overlooked. Yet today nearly half of all adults living with HIV around the world are women.

Just under two-thirds of all people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa, as are 76% of infected women. Among young people living with HIV in this region, around three in four are female.

In the U.S., only 19% of AIDS cases are female. In Africa, well over half, and maybe 3/4 are female? How can there be such a discrepancy between continents? If AIDS is a virus, then surely the numbers among women here should be much, much higher:

Physically, women are more susceptible than men to HIV infection through heterosexual sex, and this fact alone means that special attention must be paid to protecting them if they are not to be disproportionately affected by the epidemic.

Information drawn from different studies shows that during heterosexual sex, women are about twice as likely to become infected with HIV from men as men are from women.

In the U.S., AIDS (as distinct from HIV) is still an overwhelmingly male phenomenon. Yet, "AIDS does not discriminate." That's what public (dis)service announcements have told us, and AIDS in Africa is supposedly spread widely across society without stark differences between men and women, straight and gay. How, then, is it that 53% of all cases in this country developed among gay men and 81% among men more generally? Hm.+There are similar absurdities as to race. Here are the statistics as regards race and AIDS, cumulative cases to the end of 2005.+White, not Hispanic: 386,552 (39%)

Black, not Hispanic: 399,637 (40%)

Hispanic: 156,026* (16%)

Asian/Pacific Islander: 7,739 (0.8%)

American Indian/Alaska Native: 3,251 (0.3%)____________________

* Curiously, the figure for Hispanics dropped between reports for 2003 and 2005, from 177,164 to 156,026. Why? And how much trust can we put in CDC statistics when figures for any category from one report are lower for cumulative cases for year-end 2005 than for cumulative cases at year-end 2003 in another report? This is the kind of crap that people who want to know what is really going on with AIDS encounter all the time. Monkey business from the Government.+The 67.4% of the Nation that is non-Hispanic white, including the majority of gay men who developed AIDS, has less AIDS in absolute numbers than the 12.8% of the Nation's population that is black! The 14.1% Hispanic minority (which includes every race) has almost half (47%) as many AIDS cases as the non-Hispanic white majority.+The racial disparity is even more dramatic among women than among men:

Of the 123,405 women living with HIV/AIDS, 64% were African American, 19% were white, 15% were Hispanic, less than 1% were Asians and Pacific Islanders, and less than 1% were American Indians and Alaska Natives.

So AIDS does discriminate  in the United States. And the patterns of AIDS in the United States are entirely different from those of the world in general, which includes the U.S. How is that possible?+How can any of this discrimination  by race, gender, sexual orientation, even language  be if AIDS is a viral disease spread by sex and blood? It can't.+There is too much interracial sex in this country for a viral disease to stay titely compartmentalized by race and linguistic group for a quarter century. The propaganda from Government and the AIDS Industry is that, for epidemiological purposes, 'When you have sex with anyone, you are having sex with everyone s/he has ever had sex with'  and, by extension, everyone that each and every one of those people has ever had sex with, on and on, ever outward, into a huge web of interconnected partners. So even if Matt has sex only with white women and each of the white women he has had sex with has had sex only with other white men, someone along the way, one of the men those women have had sex with (say, Juan) has indeed had sex with a black or Hispanic woman, maybe many such women, or with a white, black, or Hispanic man  or many (many) men. The more partners, the more extended partners, and thus the more certitude that racial and orientational bounds have been crossed  many, many times. It is thus not possible, in a country as diverse and interactive as this for a viral disease spread by sex to remain within racial and ethnic bounds for more than a very few years, and we are already in at least the 26th year of AIDS in the United States.+Statistics that show that different racial and linguistic groups have startlingly different rates of AIDS make no sense for a viral disease. So either the statistics are wrong, or the premise is wrong. Which do you think it is? Which is easier to arrive at, numbers or meaning?+I know that the premise is wrong. AIDS is not a viral disease. It is not spread by sex. It is not spread by blood. It is a chemical injury, like asbestosis or tobacco-induced lung cancer. What is called "AIDS" in Africa  tho isn't, but just a bunch of old diseases given a new name  has everything to do with immunity weakened by malnutrition and internal parasites, in the face of a sea of tropical diseases swirling thru untreated sewage and contaminated drinking water and borne by biting and bloodsucking insects, with no medical treatment available in large parts of the continent. Consider this news item:

01/07/2004 - A daily multivitamin can slow the progression of HIV and also delay the need for antiretroviral therapy, show the results of an eight-year study by Harvard researchers out today.

We need not long puzzle over all this, any more than we need puzzle over why smokers have hugely higher rates of lung cancer than nonsmokers. The reason is obvious: lung cancer is caused not by a virus, bacterium, spirochete, ameba, or any other microbe, but by the chemical substances in tobacco smoke. And AIDS is caused not by a virus, bacterium, spirochete, ameba, or any other microbe, but by the chemical substances in the various dangerous and illegal drugs used by drug-soaked minorities. That is why minorities are grossly overrepresented in AIDS, not because they have more sex with more partners  but only within their minority!  but because they use drugs. The more drug-soaked the community, the more AIDS. It's not dirty needles, because people who snort or smoke their hard drugs get AIDS too. It's the chemicals, stupid. And clean-needle programs to 'prevent AIDS' not only cannot possibly work but actually do harm by telling people they can shoot up any amount of any chemical they want and never get AIDS if only they use a clean needle each time! Legislators are ignorant morons who are doing active harm to Americans with such insane programs as needle exchange.+Now, back to marijuana, after a long but important discursion. Is marijuana immunologically dangerous? Maybe not, in isolation. But how many pot smokers use only pot? 50%? 10%? 1%? How many, their judgment clouded by smoke (which also, by the way, entails an elevated risk of lung problems, if not even lung cancer), say, "Sh*t, man! Pot ain't dangerous. I've never had a problem with it. The Government is lying to us. And I'll bet it's lying about cocaine and heroin and meth and all those other drugs those tight-ass motherf*ckers outlawed. I don't believe for a minute that any of them can hurt me." And so they experiment, popping pills, inhaling paint thinner, then finding a connection thru which to get the standard hard drugs available on the streets mainly of the Nation's ghettos rather than on suburban streetcorners alongside manicured lawns.+Do such militant disbelievers in the harm of illegal drugs comprise 1% of marijuana users? 10%? 50%? 90%? Whatever the ratio, and the larger the base number of users, the more will go on to hard drugs.+Marijuana is indeed, in absolute, indisputable truth, the preeminent gateway drug, introduction to a galaxy of illegal and dangerous substances, the first rung on a ladder of ever harder and more dangerous chemicals that can ruin lives bigtime. Anyone who says it is not is at least lying to you and may well be lying to him- or herself as well.+But even in those people who stay with marijuana, an indeterminate proportion will be ruined by it. It will prove not an occasional indulgence but a daily fix, something they just have to have to get by. Some will drive under its influence and never have an accident. Others will drive and get into serious trouble with the law. Others will kill themselves or others in losing control of a car when their perceptions of time and space are distorted. Millions will just subsist, desiring nothing from life but to be left alone in their room smoking their pot and dreaming their drug-induced dreams.+I have a very good friend (who shall be nameless), who was for a long time a regular smoker of pot, and may be again. He has a good mind, but in his teens had some emotional tumult in his life that he medicated with marijuana. He didn't finish high school. He didn't go on to college. He didn't embark upon a career. He subsisted, living from day to day, getting one meaningless job after another. Finally, he decided he was sorry he didn't finish high school, so attended a class and got his GED, and a feeling of accomplishment. Sometime later, we were talking about this and that, and the subject of marijuana came up. He fought me over its illegal status, insisting it is harmless. I said merely, "You didn't finish high school until 30!" He has still not gone to college, still not pursued his dream of being a meteorologist on TV. He recently swore off marijuana, but has either had relapses or changed his mind to revert to regular pot use. Disgusting.+I hate to see waste, and my friend has a fine mind he should be using for better things. Just tonite we were talking on the phone and he suggested something about my involvement in the real-estate biz that I hadn't even thought of but which could indeed be enormously valuable, at least to me, and maybe to others. What else lies in his mind when he's not besotted by pot? ("Bepotted"?)+That's the other problem with drugs: relapses. Old habits, especially when reinforced by chemical dependence, die hard. And when things get tuf, it is all too easy to fall back into the solace of chemically induced relaxation that enables one to push problems off an arm's length. Oh, you never solve those problems, and they are there when you wake up. But for a few hours you can avoid thinking about them. The fact that they may have gotten worse in those few hours, and the other few hours, and the others and others and others that you avoided them, doesn't seem to sink in. Drug use solves nothing, but makes everything worse.+Alas, we refuse as a society to crack down on drugs the way we need to. The United States has the world's worst drug problem, and no minor measure will do a thing to solve it. We need draconian punishments, up to and including death, for pushers of every illegal drug. Legalization is exactly the wrong thing even to think about. We need to adopt the stance of places like Singapore and Indonesia, which kill drug pushers and severely punish users. We need to pass capital-punishment legislation and put up billboards and posters all over the place, on the streets and in media, on TV, radio, and the Internet, ubiquitously and inescapably to warn everyone that:

Drugs kill. If they don't kill you themselves, we will kill you for selling them. We may even kill you for using them. We're not playing. If you can't live without drugs, we can see to it that you don't have to.

P.S. to Yesterday's Post. When I rushed out of the house to get to work yesterday after posting to this blog, the trains were not running because police were down on the tracks looking (lackadaisically) for something. They apparently found nothing, but allowed the trains to run again after a while. I got to work a half hour late. Thanks a lot. (Fortunately, I work in an industry, law, where flex-time is common.)+When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine from my sister in Long Beach, California, wishing me a Merry Christmas. She complained that she was stuck in traffic a block from her house because of some police action with cops everywhere and helicopter overhead. I learned later that there had been a shooting at Long Beach's transit station in which two cops were seriously injured, and the police were looking for a white Nissan Pathfinder with a shattered window. Imagine that! Two police incidents at transit stations a continent apart on the same day, inconveniencing two members of the same immediate family.+I also noted, in watching CNN Headline News, two more "Evans". It turns out that one of the Duke lacrosse players being persecuted in North Carolina is named "David Evans". And while I was waiting for sports news to end, a story about some basketball player who left an Eastern team for the Denver Nuggets came on air, and who should be in the background but a teammate with the name "Evans" on his jersey. Five Evans(es) in one day. Weird.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,965  for Israel.)

Catchup. I'm b-a-a-a-ck. This has been an unusually crowded week for me, which included one day (my 62nd birthday) when I drove hither and yon for a total of 122.1 miles on personal business and my commute to work, so I have been unable to comment here as I would have liked to. One story, the absurd waste of media time given to the search for three reckless mountain climbers in Oregon, has been partly mooted by events. The search was called off in failure after only one climber was found, dead, in a snow cave. The other bodies will presumably be found in the spring, when the snows melt, or never, if they died above the permanent snow line.+My irritation was that throughout the two weeks of fruitless searches, media kept taking several minutes every hour or even half hour to tell us they had nothing to tell us! This happens all the time, especially in this day of 24-hour news channels. It's got to stop. When you have something to tell us, tell us. But when you have nothing to say, say nothing.+Nine Months of Governmental Harassment, and Counting. The prosecutor in Durham, North Carolina has dropped rape charges against three Duke University lacrosse players accused of raping a stripper who performed at a team party on-campus in March. But the bastard is continuing to pursue kidnapping and sexual-offense charges. It is long past time for the State of North Carolina and the ACLU to step in and demand the removal of that prosecutor, and act to punish him criminally and civilly. He should be sued for every cent he has now or ever will have, and sent to prison for criminal harassment, where he might find out what rape is really all about.+I am very tired of whores pretending to be innocent victims. In the present case, DNA testing on the "victim" has, according to Fox News, shown the presence inside her of 'DNA'  no, let's not pussyfoot: semen  from SEVERAL different men, NOT including any of the three accused lacrosse players and NOT including her boyfriend! The bitch is a whore, plain and simple, and nothing she says can be believed. She too should be prosecuted, for filing false and malicious charges, and sued for money, which probably matters a lot more to her than her 'reputation'.+If these boys are, as seems likely, completely exonerated  they have maintained their innocence all along  the lacrosse team and Duke University should hold a parade and rally to honor them and the ultimate triumph of justice even in North Carolina.+The prosecutor seems to have committed reverse racism against these white boys accused of rape by a black woman. Reverse racism really is not one whit better than the original racism that has for so long tainted North Carolina's reputation. Not one whit.+"David and Goliath". Evan Bayh, the U.S. Senator from Indiana who contemplated a run for the Presidency in 2008, dropped out, comparing the odds to those of "David and Goliath":

"The odds were always going to be very long for a relatively unknown candidate like myself, a little bit like David and Goliath," Bayh said .... He added that beyond the question of "whether there were too many Goliaths or whether I'm just not the right David," his chances were slim.

Apparently Sen. Bayh doesn't understand the David and Goliath fable: David WON. What anyone who uses the comparison really means is that their opponent(s), like Goliath, is (are) doomed, so Bayh should be glad to be seen as David  for that purpose only.+Of course, the whole story of David and Goliath is at best self-vaunting by the Jews, part of the thousands of years of Jewish aggression against their neighbors. The real moral of the story is that technology makes up for brute strength, because David avoided Goliath's sword, mace, and anything else he might have employed in hand-to-hand combat by hurling a projectile at him from afar.+David was a horrible, horrible person who is reported by the Old Testament to have gladly complied with a demand by King Saul that he kill and sexually mutilate 100 Philistine men (in order to present Saul with their foreskins as proof he had killed Philistines, not Jews  Jewish "scalping"). He did that. Double.

David was successful in battle against the Philistines and this aroused the jealousy of Saul, who tried to kill David by throwing a spear at him. David stayed with Saul, however, and Saul offered him his own daughter, Merav, as a wife. He later reneged on his promise, but offered David his second daughter, Michal, in exchange for the foreskins of 100 Philistines, a price that David paid.

After David had killed Goliath, the men of Israel returned home. The women came out of all of the towns of Israel to meet King Saul. They danced and sang joyful songs. They played lutes and tambourines. 7 As they danced, they sang, "Saul has killed thousands of men. David has killed tens of thousands."

8 That song made Saul very angry. It really upset him. He said to himself, "They are saying David has killed tens of thousands of men. But they are saying I've killed only thousands. The only thing left for him to get is the kingdom itself." 9 From that time on, Saul became very jealous of David. * * *

In everything [David] did, he was very successful. That's because the Lord was with him. [Yes, the Lord of the Jews is all for mass murder of non-Jews. Philistines, Palestinians (same thing: the Arabic name for Palestine is Filisteen), Christians  no difference.]

27 David and his men went out and killed 200 Philistines. They circumcised them.

Aren't the Jews wonderful? What a lovely book the Old Testament is. Children's literature of the first water. Oh, no. That's wrong. The Old Testament is unfit for anyone to read. It is filled with murderous violence, death, and injustice. It should be burned in every copy that might conceivably fall into the hands of a feeble-minded loser desperate to find something to believe in.+Instead of being loathed by all decent people thruout time, David has been glorified as a virtual demigod, praised and adored as a model for men. Michelangelo made a famous nude statue of him to regale the public, including children, in a public plaza in Florence. Some gay men have tried to make him a gay hero, by interpreting the story of Jonathan and David (found in the same book of the Old Testament I quote from above) as a homosexual love story. I'll have none of it. David was a monster.+But if one should nonetheless be tempted to compare himself to David in a "David and Goliath" contest, he should be clear: Goliath is doomed.+Mike Evans Dead?!? I was astonished to hear that the actor who played Lionel Jefferson in two classic TV sitcoms, All in the Family and (much of) The Jeffersons, has died at age 57.

Evans died of throat cancer Dec. 14 at his mother's home in Twentynine Palms, said his niece, Chrystal Evans.

Evans, along with Eric Monte, also created and wrote for "Good Times," one of the first TV comedy series that featured a primarily black cast.

Every time I see an episode of The Jeffersons with Damon Evans* (no relation) in the role of Lionel, I am annoyed to be seeing the "fake Lionel". Now every time I see The Jeffersons I will be a little sad to know that not only Weezie and Mama but also Lionel is dead, just as every time I see an episode of Roseanne with Glenn Quinn (who played Mark, husband to Becky**) I am a little sad to know he too has died, from heroin at age 32. Hey, at least George Jefferson is still alive.+Donald Trump Called Somebody Ugly? I was a bit amused to hear Donald Trump call Rosie O'Donnell ugly inside and out. Does The Donald think he's a looker himself? Oh Donald, Donald, Donald. Find a mirror that works!____________________

** Did you know that both of the very American boyfriends/husbands to the Conner girls in Roseanne were played by actors born abroad? Glenn Quinn was born in Ireland and was of Irish nationality; Johnny Galecki (who played David, husband to Darlene) was born in Belgium, where his American father was stationed during service in the Air Force.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,964  for Israel.)

Restore the N!, You moroN! The present U.S. Army Chief of Staff isn't fooling anyone in pretending that he's not a "Schoonmaker" by spelling his name "Schoomaker". The world is smarter than he is. Even the New York Post spells his last name the way I spell mine: Schoonmaker:

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoonmaker Thursday called for more active-duty troops and for the authority to make greater use of National Guard and Reserve troops in Iraq.

But Schoonmaker was talking about the short run. What about the long-term problem created by the need to fight a global War on Terror?

You're out of luck. You share the same last name with me, a vehement opponent of everything you're doing. I won't say I'm your "enemy", because we are both Americans, and almost certainly both derive from a very long line of American patriots, dating back to the Revolutionary War, when we took up arms to force the British out of OUR country. We are, or assuredly should be, allies. We care about OUR country, the United States. Do not serve Israel, which is not your country. Your sole allegiance, not just your priority, as a general of the United States, must be the United States, not Israel.+Plug in any country: Canada, our nearest neighbor geographically, and in most ways the closest of all countries on Earth to us; Britain, our New Best Friend, once Canada tossed us aside and said it couldn't stand by us if we were going to be militarist morons; the Philippines, our one-time colony, whose people love what we did in creating them into an English-speaking, wide-angle extension of our magnificent culture, but who resent our abandoning them in 1946; ANY country, be it France, which remains part of NATO despite our trying to crack the whip over that alliance and require it to do our bidding everywhere on Earth; or any other country, anywhere on this planet.+There is no country but Israel for which the United States would throw over every single principle it supposedly stands for, yet pledge permanent, obsequious obedience to the requirement that we defend that hideous monstrosity of a country against ALL righteous retribution for its crimes.+I am at once both ashamed and astonished that the United States has bought into the insanity. We're not Jews. Why would we buy into the idea that all Jews must defend Israel to the death?+There have recently surfaced suggestions that the Moslem world will, within the next few years, be able to bring the war home to us by detonating a "dirty bomb" or suitcase-sized nuclear device in an American city, perhaps one (like Sioux City, IA or Rapid City, SD) that isn't even thinking about such an attack. There have also been suggestions, from websites such as www.samsonblinded.com, that we need both to understand that that can happen, and indeed probably WILL happen, AND that we need to ACCEPT nuclear attack, in one form or another, upon our own territory, in order to defend Israel.+NO American should accept nuclear or any other form of destruction of ANY American city for the sake of Israel. The idea of creating a Jewish state in an Arab land was insane when it was first put forward, in about 1891, and it remains insane today. Nothing has changed with 115 years. The area in which "Israel" was established is still predominantly Arab and non-Jewish, indeed ANTI-Jewish. NO ONE in that entire region accepts that "Israel" is legitimate. EVERYONE there, except Jews, understands that Jews immigrated not as grateful refugees but as conquerors. They brought with them the power of insane outsiders. Compare this to today. How would we feel if Communist China, Russia, and every other power resentful of U.S. predominance in world affairs, sponsored immigration of tens of millions of Mexicans and encouraged them to break off the Southwest from our Nation, threatening the U.S. with full-scale nuclear war if we did not accede to those demands?+That might give you a sense of what it is to be a Palestinian today  except that there isn't a single power anywhere on Earth willing to stand up for Palestine, and they can't adequately defend themselves, so their situation is, if anything, vastly worse than would be that of the United States trying to defend against a worldwide alliance to rip the Southwest from us and give it to Mexico. Or to expel all white and black people and GIVE BACK what is now our country to the Indians.+I'm ashamed of my country for its behavior in the Middle East. The United States, I have always believed, or wanted to believe, from as early as I understood this to be one country (not many separate countries agreeing, for convenience, to work together), born from Revolution against unfairness, and dedicated to justice, always stood for right against wrong. We must always favor the underdog against abuse. We must always stand for the right, no matter how powerful the forces of the Wrong might be. That is the country I love. That is what I have always felt we should be willing to fite for abroad and risk death at home to achieve. Not Zionism. Not UNfairness. Not INjustice. JUSTICE. For ALL. EVERYwhere, in Palestine as much as Mississippi.+And that is what I will continue to believe until I die and am rolled into a retort and cremated, so my body merges with the sky.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2.949  for Israel.)

"Marriage" for All, or "Marriage" for None. The Legislature of my state, New Jersey, on Thursday passed "civil union" legislation that would grant all the legal rights but not the name "marriage" to same-sex couples. Not good enuf.+Proponents of "civil union" for same-sex couples but "marriage" for heterosexual couples might cite Shakespeare's downplaying of linguistic distinctions:

"What's in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other word would smell as sweet."

But we know that language matters, hugely. Would these same legislators think it fine if New Jersey State Police addressed white men as "Sir" but black men as "Boy" or "Nigger"? I suspect they would not.+So today I wrote to Governor Jon Corzine, with copy to State Senate President Richard Codey (who served for a time as a very good Acting Governor after our last elected governor, Jim McGreevey, announced he was a "Gay American", then resigned for no good reason), and the Assemblyman quoted in the AP story about that legislation:

"Love counts," Democratic Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo [of my city, Newark], a chief sponsor of the bill, said as the debate opened. "The gender of whom one loves should not matter to the state."

This is the text of my message.

"Marriage" for All, or "Marriage" for None. I am the man who in 1970 first offered the term "Gay Pride" as it is used today, for the weekend of events surrounding the first annual march commemorating the Stonewall Riots. I was born and raised in New Jersey, but left in 1965 because I felt I could not be free here. I spent the next 35 years in New York City, but returned to New Jersey in June 2000. I would like New Jersey to have the same courage as Massachusetts, and not wimp out on the word "marriage".+Let's put the issue most plainly. Would you sign a bill that permitted white couples to "marry" but allowed black or interracial couples only to "enter into civil union"? If not, you must veto the present "civil union" bill and ask the Legislature to, shall we say, call a spade a spade, so same-sex legal unions that have the same characteristics as marriage are called, simply, "marriage". In the alternative, you must, to provide the equal treatment under law mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, strip the word "marriage" away from the legal unions the State of New Jersey affords heterosexual couples.+People who see "marriage" as a religious sacrament that the state does not have the power to bless cannot object to all nonreligious unions being termed only "civil unions", "legal unions", or some other term. Conversely, of course, if the State of New Jersey confers "civil union" upon every couple and any church then blesses that union, then in that church's eyes that couple will be "married". The problem arises, however, of whether society, not just a given liberal church, recognizes committed same-sex couples as "married".+Why cause such problems? If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Why call it a "generic waterfowl"? "Civil union" IS "marriage" IS "legal union". But "marriage" has all the power of legitimacy. All else is second-class.+If you refuse to use "marriage" for same-sex legal unions, you must remove that term from heterosexual legal unions. Let's see how straight couples like the idea that they aren't married unless not just the state but also some church says they're married. I suspect they won't like it at all. If you think so too, save us all from confusion and division. Reject "civil union". Embrace "marriage". And let us all move forward in the 21st Century as equals. The world is watching (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6281233,00.html). Do New Jersey proud.

Yes, I know that yesterday I urged Mike Rounds to do South Dakota proud. I want the people of all the states to be proud of the behavior of their governments. They can't do that now.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,946  for Israel.)

Coming Back with the Dead. Some Republican diehards are hoping that a gravely ill Democratic Senator from South Dakota will die, or be so severely and permanently disabled that he would have to resign his seat so the Republican Governor, Mike Rounds, could appoint a Republican replacement, and thereby rob Democrats, and The People, of control of the U.S. Senate.+Would any decent person do that? No. But far too many Republicans nowadays are not decent people, so need to be reminded of what is right as against what is just plain wrong. An article in The New York Times yesterday suggested that despite popular feeling that only a Democrat should be appointed to fill Johnson's unexpired term, the current Governor is so partisan he might eagerly appoint a Republican. I therefore sent today, by feedback form at his website, this message to South Dakota's governor:

It is not for one man to undo the will to change of a Nation of 300 million. If it should fall to you to replace Senator Johnson, it is your moral obligation to replace him with a Democrat. Otherwise you would be guilty of insurrection against The People of the United States, and tar the Republican Party with the same dirty-politics/usurpers brush that marred the first term of the current President. Last month, the national Republican leadership actively dissuaded defeated Republicans from challenging their defeats in needless recounts. You surely understand that they had good reason for doing that: they didn't want The People to be furious with Republicans for trying to steal the election. That same reasoning militates against your appointing a Republican replacement for Senator Johnson. Your party's national leadership wanted Republicans to learn from their mistakes and do better next election. They wanted Republicans to be seen as having class, and grace under pressure; to be seen to be good losers, as the surest way to keep the people from looking upon the Republican Party with indignation and disgust. If you don't heed that advice but insist on trying to undo the will of The People as plainly spoken loud on November 7th, outraged South Dakotans should drag you from your office, toss a stout rope over the nearest strong branch or streetlite support, and hoist you by the neck until you are dead. Then doctors should transplant every organ from your body that might conceivably be useful - into Democrats.

While most people in the Nation today think of South Dakota, if they think of it at all, as a Midwestern farm or ranching state, Deadwood, South Dakota was very much a part of the Wild West, and Governor Rounds surely knows about his state's rough-justice days. Being lynched by outraged citizens may be more thinkable to a South Dakotan governor than to an Eastern or Southern governor.+I have been to the South Dakota capitol building in Pierre. There's a park right by it, and there may well be trees strong enuf to hang a tyrant from in that park, not far from the magical eternal flame of gas that emerges from a fountain  water!  to burst into flame in honor of the state's veterans.+I have also been to Mount Rushmore, the wonderful, wonderful monumental sculpture group by Gutzon Borglum near Rapid City in the western part of South Dakota. It truly is a must-see. Mount Rushmore is not just Gutzon Borglum's largest work, but also one of the largest completed sculptures in the world, if not the very largest. My city, Newark, contains Borglum's largest sculpture in bronze, "Wars of America" in Military Park, Downtown. We also have two other Borglum sculptures, one of Lincoln and one of an Indian and Pilgrim. While those are fine works, nothing compares to Mount Rushmore. If you haven't been, go  unless Governor Rounds disgraces South Dakota by appointing a Republican to replace Senator Johnson, in which case all decent people should boycott South Dakota in every way until its voters get to speak in the next Senatorial election.+South Dakota must do the honorable thing. Let Governor Rounds ask, "What would the Presidents on Mount Rushmore do?" Washington was not just nonpartisan, but actively hostile to "factions". He sought national unity and political consensus. Jefferson was a Democrat (tho the name was then "Democratic-Republican", shortened at the time to "Republicans"). Lincoln was a latter-day Republican, when the "Democratic-Republicans" had long since chosen to be called "Democrats". And Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, but a liberal! I suggest that not one of them would have tried to thwart the will of The People by undoing a change in control of the United States Senate effected by the electorate after a long, expensive, and hard-fought campaign in which tens of millions of people made plain that they want change.+Think about that, Governor Rounds. Do South Dakota proud.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,946  for Israel.)

(1) Trans-Fatheads. The New York City Council recently passed an ordinance outlawing the use of artificial trans-fats in city restaurants. How dare they? And can they get away with it?+Local restaurateurs have threatened legal action to void that ordinance, on the ground that it is not for a municipality to outlaw a substance that the Federal Government’s Food and Drug Administration has found fit to permit. I hope they do sue, and demand punitive damages against the individual councilmembers who seek to impose their own, personal attitudes upon 8 million New Yorkers and millions upon millions of commuters and tourists. It really is not for a bunch of nonscientist, hack politicians to make dietary choices for millions of people in what is supposed to be a “free” society.+There isn’t much I agree with Rightwingers about, but fiting the “Nanny State”  Government treating everyone like retarded children who can't make decisions for themselves even about the most personal of matters  is one. Government should do pretty much ONLY what individuals cannot do for themselves. With every power to ‘help’ comes the power to harm, and politics tends to attract control freaks who think they know better than other people how those other people should live.+It is not for Government to tell us what foods to eat. What next? An official, and compulsory, Government menu-planner? banishing from supermarkets and convenience stores all foods Government doesn't like? Where does it end?+People in government should mind their own business when it comes to what people eat, as long as it’s not indisputably and imminently deadly, such as poison. Speculating about what might or might not happen 20 or 30 years from now if people continue to eat disapproved foods is unscientific balderdash and must never be the basis for Government intrusion upon personal autonomy.+Meanwhile, the one substance that kills more New Yorkers than any other gets a free ride. If the city council wants to protect New Yorkers’ and visitors’ health, let it enact a total ban on tobacco: no growth, importation, or sale of tobacco or any tobacco product, period. That would be worth doing.+Could they get away with that? Why not? There are many hundreds of “dry” counties in this country, in which the sale of alcohol is either completely banned or partially restricted. Why couldn't that model be applied to tobacco, which is far more dangerous than alcohol? Tobacco kills 440,000 people a year in the United States alone  154 times as many as died on 9/11, every year, year after year, not in a surprise, one-time sneak attack but in an ongoing, well-understood and eminently preventable disaster  and 1.4 million worldwide. There is no safe level of use for tobacco. Moderation does not equate with safety. New York, which is in a very real sense the capital of the world, for being the headquarters city of the United Nations, has an opportunity to lead the way for the entire planet in destroying this ravager of humanity.+Smoking is not a personal choice that people have the right to make as a matter of personal autonomy. It would be such a choice if smokers consumed every microgram of smoke and did not release any of it into the environment other people have to breathe. But they don't. There is thus absolutely no valid comparison between smoking on the one hand and eating, drinking, or any other activity that Government overreaches in controlling as part of its "Nanny State" ambitions, on the other hand.+The real issue is not whether the New York City Council, or any other government, has the right utterly to ban tobacco, but whether it has the guts.+Municipalities and states should move forward, from the timid restrictions upon tobacco in enclosed public spaces, to a total ban on every form of tobacco that could conceivably cause harm, be it to users or, especially, to nonusers who are exposed against their will.+That would be a reasonable and responsible use of governmental power. Banning artificial trans-fats (small quantities of trans-fats are found in natural sources) is no such use.+(2) Misfits. When did people in this country lose track of what size clothing they wear? I noticed a couple of years ago that sleeves on TV shows tend to be much too long, partially covering the hands of actors. I passed that off as careless wardrobe people or pennypinching production companies trying to use the same garments for different actors in different shows on the plainly false notion that one size fits all.+But recently I have noticed, in having nothing more pressing to do than observe my surroundings while riding subways, that lots and lots of people in this country are wearing clothes that don’t fit. Pants are 2, 3, even 5 inches too long, and bunch around the shoes, especially running shoes, which require shorter pants than usual by at least an inch, because the shoe tops ride high. The backs of tens of millions of pant legs are now being frayed away by being stepped on by the wearers, and people are in danger of tripping on their own pants. For what?+Many people’s sleeves are also too long. Jackets are too big, with sleeves that cover part of the hand; horizontally, jackets bulk around the waist and chest much more than could ever be needed to accommodate a sweater, shirt, and teeshirt beneath.+Why?+Is it that particularized sizes have for the most part, in the cheap imported clothing that dominates store offerings, been replaced by category sizes  S(mall), M(edium), L(arge), XL (Extra Large), XXL (Extra Extra Large), etc.?+Is it some bizarre style fad nowadays to be dwarfed by your clothes?+Do adults imagine they will grow into over-large clothes? They might grow around the waist, but they’re not going to grow longer legs or arms.+Do people want to be bigger, so buy clothing that suggests they are bigger than they are? Is it some bizarre proof of manhood to wear 34 length pants when you’re really a 31? Oh, you might not be able to find a 31, because only even-number sizes are offered in many stores. But you could choose a 32 or, if you plan to wear them with athletic shoes, 30. Why on Earth choose a 34? If they don’t have a 32 right now, wait a couple of days or go to another store. It cannot be that everyone with grotesquely overlong pants was unable to find his or her correct size. There has to be some kind of willful choice involved here.+I sure don’t understand it.+There’s another type of clothing misfitting going on in this country too: clothing that is too lite for the weather. A few decades ago, you could understand someone's being caught going home at 2am wearing only shirtsleeves when the weather is in the low 30s or upper 20s. When they left the house, it was warm, and they assumed it would stay warm, despite the calendar. But we have pretty good weather forecasts now, and have had for years. Yet I see young people aplenty wearing much lyter clothing than is healthy in December. It’s mostly young men. Is there some kind of nouveau machismo (yes, I know that’s a linguistic mismatch) that demands that guys pretend the cold doesn’t bother them?+If these people end up in the hospital for their stupidity, or have to call in sick for work, who is going to pay those costs and make up the work they’re not doing?+Parents, if you see your kids leaving the house with insufficient protection from the weather at the coldest point they can be expected to be out, stop them and insist they dress appropriately. The cold does bother them, and cold-induced illness entails costs to others. Let them prove their manhood/adulthood in constructive and sensible endeavors, not risking their life wearing shorts or dispensing with jackets in wintry weather.+(3) Paying for Pigs. A side issue arises for me as to large sizes. Fat people are costing normal-size people money, and it’s got to stop. Large-size clothes are sold at the same price as Medium or Small. Even XL usually sells for the same price, tho plainly the increased fabric in the largest sizes costs the manufacturer more. Who makes up the difference? Smaller people  normal-size people. That’s not fair. Let fat people pay their own way  or should I say “weight”? Heavy trucks pay higher rates than lite in certain settings (highway use licenses, ferries). Fat people should pay a higher rate for the excess bulk of their clothing, and not push off their extra fabric cost onto people who don’t have a love affair with food and idleness.+(4) General “Schoomaker”. It turns out that the present spelling of the last name of the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff has no N: SchooMaker. I suspect that that is an alteration from the Dutch name I bear, SchooNMaker. One entire branch of my family got tired of having to spell the name over and over, so actually accepted the ignorance of Dutch among their neighbors and changed the name to “Shoemaker”. I imagine, but do not know, that the General’s spelling is a similar surrender to ignorance. Inasmuch as I am anti-militarist, I’m just as happy not to share a name with the Army Chief of Staff. I prefer, if any association be made with another person in the public mind, that I am seen to share the same name as the most popular wine expert in this country in the 20th Century, Frank Schoonmaker.+If the U.S. Army's Chief of Staff chooses to renounce the Schoonmaker past, that's fine with me. Who knows? Maybe we really aren't both descended from Hendrick Jochemsz Schoonmaker, 1624-1683, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, but came to what was then New Amsterdam in 1653 and moved farther up the Hudson in New Netherland, long before the British turned the whole area into New York State. But I suspect we are.+(This is an entry drafted on and for Friday, but uploaded Saturday due to time constraints.)+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,940  for Israel.)

Pushing for a Wider War. The Fox News Channel today asserted that Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf states are embarking upon nuclear programs which, altho announced to be peaceful, Fox implies, are really intended to produce weapons. The discussion among the host and three guests suggested that the Gulf states are reacting to worries about Iran's nuclear program, and the U.S., to control the situation, has to take an extremely active role in ending Iran's nuclear activities.+There is, however, a broader suggestion still than the war against Iran that the neocons and Radical Zionists have been pushing for, for well over a year. Now we are to start thinking that it might be necessary to go to war against all the Arab states of the region, to keep Israel safe. Of course, the pretense will be that we, at home, are in danger if that region goes nuclear, even tho there are no ballistic missiles or other means by which Arab nukes could get anywhere near us. No, the inferences Americans are to draw are at least twofold: (1) an attack upon Israel IS an attack upon the United States; and (2) the mere existence of nuclear weapons anywhere in the Arab world is a threat to our own soil (whether Arabs have any way of attacking us, 6,000 miles away, or not).+No, an attack upon Israel is not an attack upon the United States. It is an attack upon Israel, an utterly and absolutely foreign country with which we share essentially nothing. And no, the presence of nuclear weapons in Arabia is not an automatic threat to us. We must not buy into Radical Zionist lies and embark upon World War III for Israel. If the choice is WWIII or the end of Israel, we MUST choose the end of Israel. For me, that's not a hard choice at all.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,932  for Israel.)

Trains Make Modest Rebound. Today, New Jersey Transit launches the first of what will eventually be 234 cars that offer seating on two levels. The Governor and both U.S. Senators are riding the inaugural train at noon from Trenton to New York to celebrate.+The configuration on single-level trains is two seats to one side of the corridor and three to the other. The configuration on the two-level trains is two seats on either side of a wider aisle. In a typical 10-car train, there will be only 225 more seats because of this tradeoff. That seems a poor margin of increase for an entire second level of seating, and one must wonder what transit managers and designers were thinking.+Yes, some people avoid sitting in the middle of the three-seat side, but groups of friends and family found the wider bank congenial. The seatbacks also flipped to create little groupings in facing seats. That could be wasteful when space hogs used that feature to create more private space than they were entitled to, and if the conductors didn't restore the seats to their original orientation after a group disembarked the train. The new cars' seats are anchored in place.+But eliminating the third seat does not seem really wise if the prime objective is to provide more seats on a given train. Besides,

Seats are arranged two-by-two on the upper and lower levels, allowing more room in the aisles but no more middle seats that often serve as rest areas for briefcases and jackets.

For Joe Scholtz, who will ride the new cars on his daily commute from Manhattan to Newark, that means he'll be sitting closer to his fellow commuters. And he's not necessarily thrilled about that.

"Sitting next to someone is not the end of the world," he said on a recent morning en route to Newark. "But it's too crowded when there's two in a set."

These cars are also extraordinarily expensive:

"The cars each cost about $1.9 million, for a total of $458 million for the fleet. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is paying $250 million, with the rest coming from the federal government."

Since New Jersey is one of those states that sends more money to Washington than it generally gets back, this is good news for NJ taxpayers. But regular train riders might prefer lower fares.+Not just NJ Transit's but Amtrak's ridership is also increasing, for reasons having to do with hassles in flying and increased airfares and gasoline prices. Alas, Amtrak is an inexcusably badly run operation. Here, Amtrak owns Newark Penn Station and the tracks on the main line. The result is that on-time NJ Transit trains sometimes have to wait for late Amtrak trains, delaying far more New Jersey commuters than the passengers the Amtrak train carries. And the station's lavatories are closed for a couple of hours in the middle of the nite when New Jerseyans arriving via the PATH (interstate subway system, NJ and NY) need them. What does Amtrak care about New Jersey? Or anyplace else, for that matter?+In an article sent to me by my friend Gaetano in the Ironbound (the part of Newark that gets its name from being surrounded by railroad tracks), Boston.com reports:

In an effort to improve Amtrak service between major cities along the East Coast, a group of business leaders Tuesday [Nov. 28th] proposed transferring ownership of the Northeast Corridor rail line to the federal government.

A study released Tuesday by the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University also calls for the creation of a partnership between the state and federal government, which would have policy control over the line.

I don't know about that. I'd rather that the affected states  only  form a consortium to buy the tracks and perhaps that portion of Amtrak that operates here, and that the individual states buy the stations. New Jersey Transit is hugely better run than Amtrak, and a consortium of state transit authorities answerable narrowly to the people of this region would seem more likely to give us good service than a Federal operation. We don't need Texans telling us how to run trains in the Northeast.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,932  for Israel.)

Beware "Silver Formula" Vitamins! I don't know what has happened to the manufacturers of multivitamins and dietary supplements, but their common sense seems to have abandoned them.+I have for many years taken a multivitamin-mineral pill with fair regularity. In recent months I had been feeling less myself  less energetic, less willing to deal with the many obligations I face. One nite I was looking at the label of the multivitamin I was about to take and noticed the wording "50 & over" (or some such). I think my late mother bought that bottle for me, and I had only recently gotten to it. I began to wonder if the formulation of those pills differed from the regular pills, or the 'mature' designation was just marketing tripe.+The next time I was in a store that sold vitamins, I whipped out my reading glasses and went line by line down the label of differing multivitamin/mineral pills. Lo and behold! There was NO IRON in the "50 & over" or "Silver"-formula tablets. None at all. Do older adults no longer need iron? That seemed absurd to me, so I bought a bottle of a formulation that included an iron supplement and started taking that. Within days, I felt more energetic, more positive, more enthusiastic about my life. (And, I am reticent to mention, more sexual.) I credit the iron.+What role does iron play in the human body? Well, consider that if one does not have enuf iron (anemia), the body cannot produce hemoglobin, the essence of red blood cells. Without red blood cells, the body cannot carry enuf oxygen to its cells nor carry away enuf carbon dioxide for proper bodily functioning. I suspect, tho I have not fully investigated this, that one reason red blood cells are red is that they contain iron. Iron is, after all, what makes many red soils red (rust-colored, actually). Indeed, the blood uses more iron than all other body systems put together.+I do not think I'm imagining the improvement in my energy and wellbeing level. For one thing, I am so busy with so much in so many areas of my life that I could not focus on differences in diet or dietary supplements if I wanted to.+If you are taking a dietary supplement marketed for older people and feel sluggish, check the label. If it does not contain iron, switch to a pill that does include iron and see if, after several days, you feel better.+Subnormal Cold. ABC News reported tonite that parts of the Nation are experiencing record low temperatures. Parts of Florida dropped into the teens (F) last nite! Remember that we are still in autumn. Winter does not arrive for another 12 days. We are significantly, subnormally cold. But you are not to notice that. You are not to see the two feet of snow in the Midwest. You are not to acknowledge the frozen pipes in the Northeast. Any recognition that we are subnormally cold might incline you to doubt the "Global Warming" hypothesis, and you must never do that.+Not in Vain? ABC World News Saturday also addressed the split in opinion among parents who have lost kids to the Iraq war  no: the hell with the Radical Feminist bullshit that requires us to pretend that women are dying at the same rate as men in the military: these parents have lost sons. Some parents want the U.S. to stay in Iraq until everything turns out great!, feeling that otherwise their son will have died in vain. Other parents have sadly accepted that the war has been not the salvation but the destruction of Iraq, and want us to withdraw, immediately.+I'm sorry to say that the bereaved parents need to suffer a second horrible pain: recognition that this war was never intended to help Iraqis but always to hurt them, ravage them, KILL them  for Israel. The Iraq war is thus not a tragic failure but a wonderful success, because it has practically destroyed Iraq and threatens completely to destroy Iraq, whether the United States remains or withdraws. And that will make Israel very, very happy. The more dead Arabs, the happier Israel is. The more powerful Moslem countries around it are destroyed, the happier Israel is. Iraq? One down. Two to go: Iran and Syria are next on Israel's "hit list" of countries to be destroyed by the evil, stupid bastards of the United States Government. And Israel will achieve that destruction unless the people of this country, who have no such horrifying agenda, speak out and force a change in U.S. behavior in the Middle East.+LifeSharers. Tonite's ABC News  yes, I am partial to ABC; I worked, my first job in New York, for ABC News, as a clerk-messenger in a documentary unit  also reported on the modestly controversial work of LifeSharers, an organization that promotes organ donation. It does so by enlisting people in an organ-exchange program. If they receive an organ, when they later die, they donate their own organs, first to other members of the organization and, then, only if no LifeSharers member needs them, to the national organ transplant waiting list (on which, today, 92,000 people reside, many of whom will not receive the organ(s) they need but die!).

If you or a loved one ever need an organ for a transplant operation, chances are you will die before you get it. You can improve your odds by joining LifeSharers. Membership is free. Join LifeSharers now.

LifeSharers is a non-profit voluntary network of organ donors. LifeSharers members promise to donate upon their death, and they give fellow members first access to their organs. As LifeSharers members, you and your loved ones will have access to organs that otherwise may not be available to you. As the LifeSharers network grows, more and more organs may become available to you -- if you are a member.

LifeSharers is a private initiative, founded by one man, entirely apart from the Governmentally established waiting list. Naturally, the Government decries LifeSharers' efforts. Rather than challenge LifeSharers on a public-policy or morality basis, the Government asserts that it gets better results. I wonder. The father of my friend Joe died before he could receive a heart transplant. Is the system working so well that we don't need LifeSharers butting in? I don't think so.+Demand American Spellings! Last nite at work I encountered a document from the firm's London* office, which required British spellings. The operator before me had left a default 'English (US)' language designation in the spellchecker, which offered to change "recognised" to "recognized", and she accepted the correction. The proofreader said "NO"!+Unfortunately, Britain's ruling class is so stupid that it continues to insist upon idiotic spellings that do not conform to either American (great-majority) nor intellectually-defensible usage. The great English-language icon, H.W. Fowler, a Brit, pronounced that -IZE is the superior spelling, but nobody in Britain listened.+So stupid(, stupid, STUPID), tradition-chained Brits use -ISE where every intelligent person in the world writes -IZE.+I consulted with the proofreader, who is himself from somewhere in the (formerly British) West Indies (judging from his speech; and race). He said that yes, the S should be restored, because the document relates to a Cayman Islands company, so, as I offered, I should change the language of the spellchecker to 'English (Caribbean)' or 'UK' and recheck the document.+In some 12 pages, the spellcheck found only three differences: S instead of Z, as above; and "wilful" and "fulfil" in place of "willful" and "fulfill". That's it! 3 silly little differences between U.S. and British English in 12 pages of legal text. Why on Earth do the Brits nonetheless insist on their own stupid spelling when ours is plainly more sensible? Why do we, the greatest power in the history of the world, permit the tiny and inconsequential European island nation Britain to control the spelling of "English", a language of which the United States, one country, comprises 70% of all native speakers? It is PREPOSTEROUS.+Especially considering how LITTLE DIFFERENCE there is as a practical matter in most texts, the United States should DEMAND that its spellings be used in all English-language materials produced around the world, starting with (a) all materials created by the United Nations, to which we are the greatest contributor and (b) all materials created by U.S. law firms and corporations abroad, on pain of FINES and other gradated punishments designed to compel use of American spellings.+Why should we spend millions of dollars of American taxpayer contributions to publish UN materials in STUPID, British spellings, when WE control the now-misnamed "English" language?+If Britain wants the UN to use British spellings, it should bear the ENTIRE cost of "English"-language materials issued by the United Nations  every single copy of every single publication.+And why on Earth should AMERICAN law firms operating in Britain consent to use STUPID British spellings? We should crack the f*king whip over British courts, publications, and everything else, and give Britain the news it should have heard at latest 50 years ago: "English" ain't "British".+The United States controls "English", as even the New Zealand-born editor of the Oxford English Dictionary acknowledged perhaps 20 years ago. Should anyone doubt that, we can just change the name of the language WE control, to "American", "Anglic", or something else, demand that it be recognized as an official language AND working language of the United Nations, and SEE how many people around the world want to learn "English" as against how many want to learn "American".+If our Government will not speak to this  in perfect, American 'English'  then it is up to us who are PROUD of American 'English' to DEMAND that "our" Government use OUR tax dollars to do OUR bidding, and DEMAND that American spellings be used in all English-language materials all over this planet!____________________

* That's London, England, "United Kingdom" (altho there is no King in that "Kingdom"). Not London, Ontario, which cost the TV show All in the Family's fictional "Archie Bunker" a Christmas bonus, as seems apt at this time of year to mention. Archie never HEARD of London, Ontario, so shipped something to London, England. The cost and delay so infuriated his employer that it cut his Christmas bonus to pretty much nothing that year. I have been to London, Ontario. It struck me as one of the coldest places, humanly, that I had ever been. I spoke at the University of Western Ontario on the Expansionist Party's proposal that Canada join the Union. That was not what made London (ON) seem cold to me. I enjoy a confrontation. It was later, standing on the empty street in the cold autumn nite that made London, Ontario seem desolate. I suppose that LondON is, however, wonderful to be in on a gloriously sunny day. At least that's the kind of variation one sees with my own city, Newark, New Jersey, depending on the weather.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,928  for Israel.)